Can We Make This Button Fun To Press?

this is a button and I'm wondering can we make it fun to press the button cause let's be honest pressing buttons is kind of a lame activity as an experiment unplug your controller and see for how long it says interesting to press those stupid little buttons spoiler not very long the first reason why that is the case is impact we humans like having an impact on our environment because it gives us a feeling of control and power destroying things is only so much fun because it gives you a lot of impact quickly and without a lot of effort which makes them feel important and powerful not having any impact on your environment usually feels like a waste of time so let's start by giving our button some impact whenever you press it the starter next to it lights up we have some impact now Wow but why is it so not fun probably not enough impact yet so I decided to make the circle rotate around the button and whenever you press the button it stops you already get a feeling of control nor because you get to decide when the circle moves and when it doesn't and that impact is already big enough to

create a little bit of fun there are still a big difference though destroying an object in real life has a lot more lasting consequences there's no bringing that whatever that was back to normal which makes its destruction feel more meaningful than a temporary circle motion on a screen writing something with a pencil on a piece of paper doesn't feel nearly as meaningful as writing with a permanent marker on a shelf write lasting consequences are more fun so let's give our button some lasting consequences holding the button creates a bubble and releasing it shoots it away and I have to say it worked it's a lot more fun now it almost feels like drawing an image I even decided to give the baton some knock-back when firing which made it even better anything that adds additional impact to your actions is usually a good thing by the way do you know what people really like to have an impact on other people when you make a move in chess your impact is not just that the piece is standing in a different position now a far bigger impact you had is being able to trigger thoughts emotions and reactions from your opponent another kind of impact is reward if somebody told me that I'd get

a piece of chocolate every time I press a button I'd probably press that button quite a lot because I like chocolate and it releases dopamine in my dummy little brain well we cannot do that there are a lot of other things we can use as chocolate and video games the two most obvious ones are acoustic rewards and eye candy help there are entire YouTube channel centered around the creation of satisfying sounds because sounds can really be quite addicting in my case I just used a free program called BF XR to create some sound effects real quick they're not even all that good but the difference it makes is still absolutely remarkable let's also add some eye candy in the form of particles some wobble and various shaking effects haptic rewards like controller Rumble work as well so far we're still just adding additional impact to our button that is because reward and impact are very closely related a good reward has to have some sort of impact and impact almost always feels quite rewarding the same rules apply lasting rewards tend to feel more valuable classic example for that in games would be an XP bar every time you fire a projectile you get XP when the

bar is full you level up and the higher your level the more projectiles you shoot at once the additional project hurts then lead to you having even more impact and eye candy to look at so this is definitely both the desirable as well as a lasting reward what's interesting about rewards is that artificially delaying them a bit can often make them even more desirable one of the reasons why loot boxes often have quite prolonged opening animations and there's yet another way to make rewards feel even more rewarding randomness so let's try that let's randomize the XP values and tada we have turned our button into an abusive gambling game yay morally questionable but I'm not gonna lie it is more exciting and keeps you pressing those buttons for a while so that's our first segment impact and reward are more than enough to make something fun look at this that button must be fun to press right next up balancing over select line playing the piano drawing playing chess all of these activities require entirely different body motions but they're fun for the same reason Challenge yep even something as simple

as a button press can provide you with enough challenge to keep you entertained for thousands of hours I can't be the only one who's amazed by that am I the problem with challenges that too much of it feels stressful and frustrating too little of it feels boring if you want people to have fun with your challenge you have to keep them between the two which is hard to pull off mainly because people are just so different from one another I added some enemies that can only be defeated by projectiles that are big enough projectiles that are too small compared to the enemies are absorbed completely without dealing any damage this makes for surprisingly compelling challenge that is all about timing positioning and even a little bit of planning I also attached the expiry war to destroying enemies because attaching rewards to challenges is a sensible thing to do I guess a good challenge should also feel fair and provide you with plenty of feedback on how well you're doing our game already somewhat fulfills those two requirements so let's just leave it at that the game feels pretty fun by now and I can't stop pressing the button help me that is the power of challenge very very powerful tool for creating fun there's just one more missing piece in the puzzle fantasy

we humans have the amazing ability to emphasize with almost everybody and everything we love to wonder what it must be like to explore space in our spaceship to go on a journey meet new friends we love stories we love feelings and we find it very fun and refreshing to escape reality from time to time the question is can we even make that happen with our button let us try tada you're in a spaceship now the owners of the spaceship like having fun ok that's why the broad fun on the spaceship and just like that you're not pressing a random button anymore you're pressing the master button in the fun spaceship and what's surprising is that it really does make a difference even though the gameplay is completely the same you are in space none could also be one of the greatest fighters in the world you can be whatever you want to be you just have to acknowledge that people do want different things and that counts for all three of these categories different people want different challenges different rewards different fantasies so if somebody doesn't like space you might even be better off keeping it abstract you know what I'm saying there are no one-size-fits-all

solutions the truth is nobody knows what fun even is mean it's some sort of complicated thing happening in your brain with millions of neurons involved but the details of how a finger motion like this can turn into something as powerful as fun will probably remain a secret for a while longer the best we can do till then is creating over simplified models like this which might not be the full truth but close enough that we can do something useful with it needless to say I'm not the first one trying to explain the phenomenon of fun I took a lot of inspiration from other people's work here these three points are just the ones that came up again and again and again so I combined them into one model feel like it's definitely a solid framework at least it explains the fun and all of my favorite fun activities but I'm curious to hear what you think now let me show you another amazing button that is really fun to press I promise the wishlist button off will you snail the indie game I've been working on for two years now it's a fast paced platformer about fighting and interactive AI codes where two tries to predict your movement and spawns traps in real time the link is in the

description and it's a very fun button to press it has a lot of impact because it puts the game directly into your wishlist which makes sure you don't miss the launch and I get a little of extra visibility so it's a great way to support the channel last but not least here some video recommendations for you if you enjoy game design videos like this I can only recommend you check these out they're covering very interesting questions like what makes for an interesting decision in a game how can you craft interesting decisions and much more looking at the topic fun from a couple of different angles really hope you enjoyed this video hope you got something out of it earns you and the next one